Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations

Longer Looks: The Last Day Of Life; Asking For Organs; Giving Bad News

Each week, KHN's Shefali Luthra finds interesting reads from around the Web.

The New York Times Magazine:
The Last Day Of Her Life
Sandy Bem, a Cornell psychology professor one month shy of her 65th birthday, was alone in her bedroom one night in May 2009, watching an HBO documentary called “The Alzheimer’s Project.” For two years, she had been experiencing what she called “cognitive oddities”: forgetting the names of things or confusing words that sounded similar. She once complained about a “blizzard” on her foot, when she meant a blister; she brought home a bag of plums and, standing in her kitchen, pulled one out and said to a friend: “Is this a plum? I can’t quite seem to fully know.” … The next month, Sandy’s husband, Daryl, from whom she had been amicably separated for 15 years, drove her from Ithaca to the University of Rochester Medical Center for cognitive testing by a neuropsychologist named Mark Mapstone. … After three hours, Mapstone gave a preliminary diagnosis: amnestic mild cognitive impairment. At first Sandy was relieved — he had said mild, hadn’t he? — but then she caught the look on his face. This is not a good thing, Mapstone told her gently; most cases of amnestic M.C.I. progress to full-blown Alzheimer’s disease within 10 years. ... That day at Mapstone’s office, she vowed that she would figure out a way to take her own life before the disease took it from her. (Robin Marantz Henig, 5/14)

The Atlantic:
The Art Of Asking For Human Organs
The exact requirements vary from state to state, but in general, discounting the living donors who give their kidneys and partial livers, organs can be obtained from people in one of two circumstances: Either they’ve been declared brain-dead at the hospital, or they’ve died from heart failure at the hospital. Most deaths, though, take place outside the hospital—in 2012, the national average of hospital deaths across all 50 states was just over 20 percent. Meanwhile, the U.S. faces an organ-donation shortage; around 21 people die each day waiting for an organ transplant, according to the national Organ Procurement and Transplant Network. (Cari Romm, 5/15)

The Wall Street Journal:
How Doctors Deliver Bad News
Doctors are trying new ways of solving an old problem—how to break bad news, which is as much a staple of doctors’ lives as ordering blood work and reviewing scans. One issue: Patients and their families, of course, aren’t all going to respond in the same way. Research into the effectiveness of training doctors in how to deliver bad news has turned up mixed results, with patients often not noticing any benefit. (Sumathi Reddy, 5/18)

The Atlantic:
Blueprint For A Better Human Body
What was once an industry bent on replicating the human body exactly, the world of prosthetics has started thinking more creatively about what the human body can be. As technology advances, as engineers start to borrow ideas and designs not just from human biology but from elsewhere, and as prosthetics become less stigmatized, there are all sorts of options opening up. The human body, and what people consider the “normal” human body, can be a whole lot more than what’s biologically possible. (Rose Eveleth, 5/17)

The Washington Post:
Fertility Medicine Brings Babies — And Tough Decisions
[Brenda] Loblein was 35 when she walked down the aisle for the second time, and she was already a mother to three children from her first marriage. But the meteorological satellite operator knew that she wanted a child with her new husband, and in vitro fertilization was necessary. Today, they have a little boy and a little girl — and, despite Loblein’s best efforts not to create more than they needed, that extra embryo she had wanted to avoid. Waiting in limbo for her to decide its fate. (Ellen McCarthy, 5/18)

Vox:
Bernie Sanders Is Unleashing A Plan To Make Prescription Drugs Cheaper
Generic drugs are cheaper versions of drugs that have lost their patent. But in recent years, the prices for generic drugs have been rising quickly and inexplicably. One report from pharmacy benefits manager Catamaran found that consumers paid, on average, $13.14 for each prescription of the 50 most popular generics in 2010. By 2014, they paid $62.10 — a 373 percent increase. (Sarah Kliff, 5/19)

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